


can i rest with you a while?

by purple_mountain



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Brotherly Affection, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exhaustion, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Age Play, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Platonic Cuddling, Pre-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Sleepy Cuddles, Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_mountain/pseuds/purple_mountain
Summary: age regression, cuddles, need i say more(some character study snuck in by accident. just a little. oops)
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 9
Kudos: 619
Collections: MCYT Age Regression (SFW)





	can i rest with you a while?

**Author's Note:**

> title from cavetown's things that make it warm!
> 
> set in an au where wilbur doesn’t snap and they try to get l’manberg back minus all the insanity, i guess. like, the happiest possible version of tommy and wilbur’s relationship because i have so many feelings about those two. currently emotionally compromised especially after the past few days’ streams so here’s some fluff with no plot. i have no idea how exactly this au would branch off canon. feel free to rationalize it however you want
> 
> ive been wanting to write agere for this fandom for a WHILE but never worked up the courage until the past few days. big shout out to the other agere writers that popped up recently youre braver than i am and im glad it’s catching on with these characters (these are characters!! quick psa. 100% based on the fictional characters. also this is 100% SFW and platonic so please do NOT interpret as anything else.)
> 
> anyways yeah! jazz hands. its 5am i should be sleeping

He wakes disoriented.

The ravine is dry and dark around him; the air he breathes is thin in his lungs. A deep inhale or two stings cold enough to pull him from the last dredges of sleep and he scrubs his hands across his face. His hair is getting long, he thinks, running his fingers through it. He’d been neglecting his appearance. He’d been...busy. The thought twists in his chest and he...he...

He remembers, with a start, that he’d _been_ woken. But there’s no movement in the shadows in his ends of Pogtopia, no shifts in the darkness to betray a presence. Wilbur frowns, swinging his feet out of bed until they hit the icy stone below. “Hello?” he murmurs, voice barely breaking the silence. “Who’s up?”

More silence. He almost tucks his legs back under the covers, almost turns his back on the dark, but - well. He has better instincts than that. And they’re telling him there’s something he’s missing.

The air around him warms as he moves, muscles stiff but loosening. Only the slightest hint of soreness pulls at them, from all the work he’d done earlier (mining, mining, more mining). There’s still coal dust under his fingernails, but he can’t even see his hands in the dark. He takes a deep breath. Another.

Light flickers in the furthest corner of Pogtopia.

It’s past the furnaces and the potato farm. Wilbur scales the ledges in his way, grip strong but faltering as he fumbles around, unsteady. He’s usually the last to go to bed; he knows this for a fact.

(He makes his rounds before he sleeps, brushing the hair from Tubbo’s forehead (when the kid stays here, rarely, when not trapped in the White House) and tugging the shoes off Tommy’s feet. He makes sure Niki’s found her way to bed, under at least two blankets because she’s always been more susceptible to the chilled stone than the rest of them. When Techno does spend the night in the ravine, Wilbur visits him too. There’s a gap between them, wider than he remembers, but younger brothers will always be younger brothers.

He makes his rounds before he sleeps. It’s for his own peace of mind. It’s for the fire in his chest that never fades.)

The light shines dim and weak from a candle. The fingers of yellow-orange warmth it spills on the grey slate around them dance, movement slow and hypnotic. On the corner of a bundle of wooden planks rests the candle in question; the wood is arranged to make a desk. A figure sits at it, hair pale and cast in sharp relief between the warm light and the cold dark.

Tommy looks rough. He hunches awkwardly over his seat, squinting in the low light with ink stains up both arms to his elbows, black smudging both the insides of his forearms and his red sleeves and looking eerily similar to bruises if Wilbur tilts his head the wrong way. It sets off something raw and protective in his chest. He stuffs that down; Tommy needs gentleness. It’s too late in the night (too early in the morning) for anything but. “Tommy?” he breathes. The kid doesn’t move, eyes wide and unblinking until they slip shut, before snapping open once more. It’s...oddly cute, watching him try to stay awake. “Why are you up?”

If there is an exhausted Tommy capable of higher reasoning, it is not this one. The kid twists in place to meet Wilbur’s eyes, softening at the concern he finds there, and his shoulders droop. “Wilbur?” he mumbles, barely hitting the vowel sounds. Wilbur only recognizes his own name because he’s heard this voice countless times, heard the tiredness bleed through in every letter.

“Hi,” Wilbur draws closer, unable to resist a smile. When he’s near enough, Tommy tips sideways in his seat to let his head collide with Wilbur’s chest. He doesn’t move to wrap his arms around Wilbur, or even to make the embrace easier for them both. He just submits to being held, Wilbur’s arms around his head.

When Wilbur pulls away, Tommy struggles to sit up straight once more. “Couldn’t sleep,” the younger boy says. His blue eyes are a darkened silver in the shadow his candle casts. The way they slant for a moment - the way his nose scrunches between blinks, the way his eyebrows knit and then relax - tells Wilbur everything he needs to know.

Tommy always tries to resist his drops, and this is no different. He can never let himself be vulnerable without fighting it first, and even if the struggle frustrates Wilbur sometimes, it’s so very _Tommy_ that he can never seem to mind.

That doesn’t stop him from pulling out all the stops. “Couldn’t sleep? But Toms, you look so tired.” His voice dips soft and low, pitch only curving up at the ends of his sentences - knowing, suggesting.

“Tha’s not fair,” Tommy whines, one fist tangling in the fabric of Wilbur’s shirt. “Can’t use the voice. ‘m not little right now.”

“Oh,” Wilbur begins, “I don’t know about that. I think you are, Tommy, aren’t you? So very small.” His hands find Tommy’s face, thumbs brushing over his cheeks before he cradles the back of his younger brother’s head. “Such a tired boy.”

Tommy makes a noise high in his throat, tears brimming in wide eyes. He’s a bit of a weepy little on rougher days - Wilbur makes a note to ask him later if he’d had a nightmare - so he merely lets his touch linger on Tommy’s face and hums deep. Tommy’s eyes slip closed for a moment, and when they open once more, they’ve relaxed; their blue is hazy, tired, but calm.

There’s something that goes soft in his chest every time he watches Tommy drop just like that, just for him. Some of the tension in Tommy’s shoulders and face bleeds away, leaving behind someone who looks so exhausted with the world (someone who has every right to be) and who looks so, so tiny. “I’ve got you, I promise - shh,” he soothes, helping the boy stand and finally pulling Tommy into a proper hug. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

Trembling hands clutch the back of his shirt, his baby brother’s face hidden in Wilbur’s neck. The back of Wilbur’s mind, the part that had been worried and stressed and strung tightly for _weeks_ quiets at the thought of Tommy trusting Wilbur so wholeheartedly to hide him from the world. Wilbur turns his head to bury his face in his brother’s hair, breathing slowly to calm his racing heart. Tommy’s warm and safe in his arms.

He wants to take this moment and hold it forever. But the grip on his clothes weakens as Tommy drifts, going lax in Wilbur’s embrace, and he figures it’s best for both of them to make their way to bed.

When he goes to move them both, Tommy keens and presses closer. He’s sure if Tommy was more aware - less drowsy and warm and pliable - he’d be flushed with embarrassment. Because that was Tommy, wasn’t it? A kid insisting he was grown up and shoving away all the comforts he thought couldn’t come with that. Shoving away a headspace that comforted him, refusing to verbalize his own love for being tucked under someone’s arm, for trailing after his big brother.

Don’t get him wrong - he knows when to step back so Tommy can step forwards. He’s so very proud of his baby brother, sometimes. Even if he’s annoying at best, reckless at worst, Tommy is strong and a leader like one Wilbur’s not seen before. Wilbur knows there will be a day when he finally finds himself following Tommy. But for now… he is the one to step forwards. He is the one to catch clumsy limbs when they trip and fall and bruise themselves on the ground; he is the one to pull them closer and hold them tight. He is the one to guide and heal and care, because there’s nothing like the way the light in Tommy’s eyes makes him feel, especially not when it’s for him. Not when it looks at him like he’s built the world.

And this world is dark. And this night is late.

“It’s sleepytime now,” Wilbur whispers. The phrasing tips Tommy a little deeper; he shudders and then shifts so wet blue can meet gentle brown again.

“Can’t,” Tommy insists. “Wilby, can’t.” A nightmare, then. The nickname - the refusal to sleep - of course he’s up late.

Wilbur nudges him forwards. “Yes, you can. You’re staying with me, okay? For tonight.”

“Mm.” Tommy follows, but shakes his head. “I can s’eep on my own.”

“C’mon, Toms,” he coaxes. The trip back across the ravine floor is slow, but that’s okay. They have time. They have all the time they want, because the sun hasn’t risen yet and because Wilbur says so. “Can you really?”

The question isn’t harsh; it’s more a quiet reminder. Tommy only takes a second to think before he’s shaking his head again, for another reason. Wilbur exhales quickly, a barely audible laugh. “You’re just too little, hm? I know - hey, it’s okay. I know.”

His words have the intended effect; Tommy clings tighter, like he’s been set adrift and he can’t feel the bottom under his feet. Wilbur pauses and gathers him closer - they sway together for a minute, or maybe two or maybe twenty, Wilbur’s breath puffing against the top of Tommy’s head and Tommy’s cold nose against his collarbone. The rocking motion gently crumbles away any _big_ that Tommy might’ve had left. “I know. Almost there.”

He takes Tommy’s hand. “Step up - one, two - there you go. Good job.” Tommy grips his hand in return and basks under the slight praise as Wilbur guides him back towards his ruffled nest of a bed. “In, now. Thank you.”

Tommy shivers when he crawls under Wilbur’s blankets, the fabric still sleep-warm and soft. In the barest reaches of the candle’s light, from the other end of Pogtopia, he can make out the exhaustion on Tommy’s face now that his eyes have adjusted. He quickly slides in beside his brother, feeling tired enough himself.

Tommy wiggles until he’s in Wilbur’s arms again, both of his own gathered tight to his chest. Wilbur knows having both pressed close makes Tommy feel safe, especially when he’s this tiny. “You’re so sweet. You know that, don’t you? My sweet boy.”

Tommy’s halfway gone already, the fingers of his right hand flexing once, twice, before he finds the fabric of Wilbur’s shirt again. He fumbles blindly with his left for a second before Wilbur reaches for it, letting the boy latch onto Wilbur’s index finger with his whole fist. Wilbur brushes his fingers over Tommy’s knuckles, then twists to press a kiss to the side of his baby brother’s head.

He wants nothing more in the world to hold this moment forever. And here in the dark - he can pretend they can stay like this. Sleepy, safe, whole. Together.

“I love you, Toms.”

“...love you too, Wilby.”


End file.
